Full Description
Winner of the 2021 Excellence in Research and Scholarly Activity Award from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Finalist for the 2021 American Book Fest Best Book Awards
Aging is one of the most compelling issues today, with record numbers of seniors over sixty-five worldwide. Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life examines a diverse array of cultural works including films, literature, and even art that represent this time of life, often made by people who are seniors themselves. These works, focusing on important topics such as housing, memory loss, and intimacy, are analyzed in dialogue with recent research to explore how "stories" illuminate the dynamics of growing old by blending fact with imagination. Gray Matters also incorporates the life experiences of seniors gathered from over two hundred in-depth surveys with a range of questions on growing old, not often included in other age studies works. Combining cultural texts, gerontology research, and observations from older adults will give all readers a fuller picture of the struggles and pleasures of aging and avoids over-simplified representations of the process as all negative or positive.
Contents
Foreword by Margaret Cruikshank
Introduction: "Where Do I Begin?"
Senior Parents and Their Adult Children: "Can't We All Just Get Along?"
Surveying the Housing Options: "No Place like Home"?
Understanding Memory Loss: "Am I Losing my Mind?"
Intimacy: "Love is All You Need"?
Women and Men: "Separate But Equal"?
Money, Work and Retirement: "Are We There Yet?"
Death: "The Final Frontier"?
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index
